Last year Ruth and I bought a new dining room set for our home in Florida. I even wrote a blog about the purchase. Our tables have been the centerpiece of wonderful conversations over our years together. When we returned this year Ruth noticed “the leg on your chair is wobbly”. She called the furniture store and they said they’d send a repairman. “He’ll be in touch with you.” Later that day he called and set an appointment for December 31st. He just left.
When the man and woman team arrived I pointed out a small dent on the underside of one corner of the table that we discovered after it was delivered last year. We didn’t do anything about it at the time, but since they were on site, I asked if this was something they could address. The helper spoke right up, “I can take care of that” . Carlos and his helper completed their tasks in about fifteen minutes. Everything is as good as new.
We talked a bit before they left about their jobs as subcontractors for the furniture store. Carlos said, “We don’t make furniture in the United States anymore, so no-one here knows how to fix it. I learned from my brother, and she (as he referred to his helper) learned from her father. There are no schools teaching this.” We discussed the importance of learning by doing. “If it weren’t for my brother, and her dad, we wouldn’t have these jobs today. People would be discarding more things instead of fixing them. We do too much of that.”
When they left I thought about some of the things I learned from the adults in my life. I learned how to cook by watching my dad. He wasn’t a great cook by anyone’s measure, but he did cook. It was a natural part of our home. While we had cereal most mornings during the week, Dad would fry up bacon and eggs on the week-end or hamburgers on Saturday nights. His mix featured bits of chopped onion. It wasn’t what he made that impressed me, but that he did indeed cook. He also scrubbed the kitchen floor, ran the vacuum, ironed his own work shirts, and sewed on a missing button or two. The lesson was men work around the house as well as women.
He wasn’t particularly handy, but he tackled many jobs just the same. If it required muscle like building a driveway, tearing out and planting shrubs, or putting in a new lawn, he was right at home. He knew, too, when things were best left to others, so he deferred to my Grandpa Barner if the furnace was on the fritz (a technical term for broken). When the house needed to be remodeled, or a new roof, he called upon my Uncle Harry Barner. I got to watch them all, so I learned from the best. Like my dad, I learned when I was comfortable tackling something new. I also learned the hard way, through failure, when it was best to rely upon others.
The summer I turned sixteen I worked with Grandpa Barner in his plumbing and heating business. I learned about the various types of wrenches: pipe, combination, socket, basin, monkey, and open-end. More importantly I learned how to use them. I also learned how to clean furnaces and hang duct work. I mastered tin snips and hack saws. The most important lesson of the summer was I’d rather make a living with my brain than my muscles. I wouldn’t have learned that if I hadn’t had the chance to work with Grandpa.
Ruth and my first home was a two unit house I bought the second year I taught. When I bought it I painted the upstairs unit. I learned how to paint by doing. After we married, we moved into the lower unit. It was short on closets, so Ruth’s dad, Lou, built two matching closets on either side of the large window that faced the street side of the house. He was a professional carpenter. I “held”, “fetched”, but mostly “watched”, how he attacked his task. I learned as I watched, so when other similar jobs arose over the years, I was able to “do”.
At one point I noticed the floor near our toilet was beginning to sag. I knew how to pull the toilet from my work with my grandfather. When I told Lou what I was planning to do, he offered to help. “If the floor is sagging you’ll have to cut out the bad spot and replace the underlayment.” That’s the day I learned about “underlayment”. We pulled the toilet and identified the area that needed to be replaced. Lou used a drill to cut a pilot hole and placed his jigsaw in the hole. He cut out the bad spot, then measured and cut a piece of plywood to replace it. When it didn’t quite fit, he took a piece of scrap wood to use as a buffer, and tapped on it with a hammer until the new piece fell into place. I would have beat on the new piece until it fit, but Lou knew better. I’ve used that trick dozens of times over the past almost fifty years.
And then there’s the lessons I’ve had from the women in my life.
TBC